


Glamor

by shinealightonme



Category: Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Bittersweet, Growing Up, Multi, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:01:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Falling in love the hard way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glamor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesireeArmfeldt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesireeArmfeldt/gifts).



When Fiona is 12, she gives her heart away to an achingly beautiful girl with a sad face.

Of course, this is in the school pantomime, reserved for Second and Third Years too young to be trusted with actual dialogue. Everyone wears silly make-up and costumes, and the entire thing is held together with duct tape, and her heart, when she gives it away, is made of construction paper.

Fiona has not yet learned that just because something is imaginary doesn't mean it isn't also real.

-

When Fiona is 15 a man smiles at her.

The smile is meant to please, not her, but her father; it's the smile of a man who wants to stay on good terms with a new business partner.

It's also the smile of a man who doesn't know much about 15 year old girls, and either through his ignorance or her willful misinterpretation, it looks shy but suggestive.

It's apparently not the smile of a man who's expecting a 15 year old girl to follow him to the continent and show up at his doorstep the next morning.

The drive back to the airport – Hans' English-speaking business partner driving and studiously not looking at her, Hans himself not even waiting til the car had pulled away to flee back inside – was the most torturous, embarrassing experience of Fiona's life.

By the time she's on the plane back home, she finds she's more upset about returning home than about leaving Hans. She can't help but imagine what her parents will say; what the other kids in school will say. She thinks about how Polly will respond, Polly who ought to understand better than anyone but seems to have so deliberately blotted out her own adolescent devotion.

Fiona just can't figure how she'd been so wrong.

-

When Fiona is 17 she throws a party.

Too many people show up, but that's half the fun of throwing parties, and Fiona thrives in the energy and the attention. She can navigate a crowd as easily as if she had a road map, stopping and smiling and chatting with everyone for just the right length of time, saying just the right thing. The perfect hostess, who always knows where her guests are and what they need.

Nina always hogs the spotlight at these things; she was just made to be larger than life. But Fiona finds that her eyes always lock onto Polly in the end. Polly pushes herself out of the spotlight, which really ought to be hers, but that doesn't make her any less remarkable. Maybe even more so.

Fiona spots the intruders the second they show up, of course. They aren't the only people who've gate-crashed, but the other uninvited guests at least look familiar, seem to fit in.

The three fellows who have just walked in the door don't fit in. They don't hog the spotlight like Nina; they don't hide their light in the shadows like Polly. They just seem to float up out of the depths like those sea monsters with glowing eyes, and Fiona doesn't like them.

She makes her way through the party to dismiss them. The tallest, oiliest one locks eyes on Polly the second he steps into the room, in a way that Fiona is all too familiar with, that she doesn't like at all.

Fiona walks faster, but the three newcomers make a beeline straight for Polly, and by the time she gets over there, Polly's laughing. They've already charmed her somehow, and Fiona can't throw out someone who's made Polly laugh.

That doesn't change Fiona's mind about them. In fact she feels almost ill from her hatred of them, and she doesn't know why.

She leaves Polly to have her fun, and mingles with the rest of the guests, but finds her eyes wandering over more and more to the interlopers. The tall one – she drifts by close enough to hear Polly call him "Seb" – monopolizes Polly for most of the night.

When Polly finally (finally) splits off from them to use the bathroom, Fiona decides she has to find out more about them.

Fiona drifts up, but Seb and his friends barely register her presence.

"Who are you boys, really?" Fiona asks, accuses.

They eye her lazily, like they don't really believe she's there.

"Just guys looking for a good time." Seb smirks.

"You look like a good time," the short one elbows his friend.

"How would you like to get to know us better?" the third fellow asks.

Fiona narrows her eyes at him.

"Come off it, boys," Seb says. "You can't charm this one."

"Damn right you can't," Fiona tells him.

"Someone's beaten you to it," Seb continues. "Oh, look, Polly's returned. Polly, love, your friend was just introducing herself."

"You've met?" Polly smiles at Seb.

It isn't a smile that Polly had ever given her.

But it isn't the smile that Fiona had seen Polly give Thomas Lynn, back when he still existed, before Polly stopped talking about him.

Fiona doesn't like whatever's happening, but she thinks there must be some part of Polly that doesn't like it, either.

Fiona does what she always does. She hosts her party. She smiles and talks back to people and moderates the inevitable fights that break out. And she always, always keeps an eye on Polly.

Someone has to do it.


End file.
